Reading a good long novel is in many ways like having a long and satisfying affair

The most important things are the hardest to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them.

Oh Christ, he groaned to himself, if this is the stuff adults have to think about I never want to grow up

Do you need someone to make you a paper badge with the word WRITER on it before you can believe you are one? God I hope not.

Writing is seduction.

All I can say is what you already know: some days are treasure. Not many, but I think in almost every life there are a few. That was one of mine, and when I'm blue -- when life comes down on me and everything looks tawdry and cheap, the way Joyland Avenue did on a rainy day -- I go back to it, if only to remind myself that life isn't always a butcher's game. Sometimes the prizes are real. Sometimes they are precious.

Put an egg in your shoe and beat it, make like a tree and leave, imitate an amoeba and split.